Letter from France: The Art of Looking Sideways
The Tour Montparnasse from Montmartre, Paris. By Jean Ruaud.
Dear DB’s readers,
If I was going to the proverbial desert island and if I was allowed only one book to carry with me (God forbid!), it may well be “The Art Of Looking Sideways” by Alan Fletcher. Unfortunately the mere weight of this mammoth volume would certainly prevents its transportation on the “Lost” island, if one exists!
The late Alan Fletcher was a British graphic designer, the co-founder of Pentagram Design firm and the creator of many beautiful realizations among them the Victoria & Albert Museum’s logotype, the curious Reuters dotted logo and many more. And he is the author of “The Art Of Looking Sideways”, a huge book about… well, everything! The book is a work of art in itself, beautifully and meticulously crafted and designed. It is difficult to describe, a “wunderkammer”, a collection of ideas, images, thoughtful quotes from artists, philosophers, writers and scientists, memories, visions, stories, brainwaves, discoveries, found objects, a treasure of knowledge and curiosity, a manual of visual awareness… It’s a book that you’ll never read from beginning to end, but that you are happy to own and browse when things are a little bland and when your curiosity falters or when you’re in need of some inspiration (you can use it as a doorstop if you like, its size and weight are appropriate for!).
I can’t help but think of this book as a kind of “paper-blog”, a precursor of the quality and highly personnal blogs, the best and the brightest of all blogs perhaps and a huge one. Alan Fletcher’s visual curiosity and deeply original mind would have made a wonderful blogger. One wonders what Fletcher would have made with the Internet of today, perhaps one of the projects he was working on at the time of his death (2006) had something to do do with the web. Maybe we’ll know one day.
Later,
Jean
Montmartre in winter, Paris. By Jean Ruaud.